


Postcards from the Future

by xpityx



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Gen, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 19:11:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15031379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: What if the harbour hadn’t been blocked? What if the message had gotten through?What if they’d won?





	Postcards from the Future

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by my Black Sails lovelies: [SlumberousTrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlumberousTrash/pseuds/SlumberousTrash) and [urcadelimabean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/urcadelimabean).

Celebrating A Hero

_By Tasha Dixonne_

  


Madi Scott, Queen of the Slave Rebellion. A romantic figure, she has been the subject of countless books, plays, poems and movies: I once even saw a three-person, all-female theatre production of her life story at the Edinburgh Fringe festival (which was great). However, the reality remains that we know little about this extraordinary woman.

 

This year will mark the 300th anniversary of the Declaration of Rights and I have come to Banjul, The Gambia, for the celebrations. The Gambia, of course, has the third largest GDP worldwide, and the second largest in Africa. It’s a sprawling, multicultural city that has long proclaimed its historical links to the Maroon Queen (along with, by last count, 16 other cities and villages along the Western coast of Africa and, somewhat bizarrely, Lalmiri in India), but even here we are no closer to the truth of Madi Scott’s antecedents.

 

Banjul, however, seems a good place to be to celebrate such an event. Famous for its music industry, the ubiquitous Akwaaba Music have their headquarters here along with smaller labels such as Sony and Opika. There is, in fact, a statue of Madi Scott outside of Akwaaba Music’s towering skyscraper on Liberation Avenue, so it’s there that I make the first stop on my pilgrimage. Crafted by internally-renowned Netsai Mukomberanwa, the 20 foot sculpture shows Madi between her mother and father, the waves of their hair melding over their embrace. Almost nothing is known of her parents, and death certificates have been discovered for both Madi and her mother, Awa Scott, dated from the first Spanish invasion of Nassau in 1703. Later accounts, notably from Eleanor Guthrie's diaries, tell us that her mother was alive for at least 15 years beyond that date, and of course we have an exact account of Madi Scott’s death in 1766 from her daughter’s copious letters. In a way it has become difficult to tell fact from fiction, and countless stories have grown up between the cracks of what we know for sure about the Queen of the Slave Resistance. In fact, the only document that can be definitively attributed to her is the Declaration of Rights, written and published in 1718.

 

Legend has it that when her fleet sailed into Newport, runners were sent into the countryside and at every farmstead they came to they told the owners that the Maroons were coming. All  that heard this freed their slaves without Madi and her army ever having to fire a single shot. That very day she was said to have sat in the Governor's residence and written out the Declaration on his fine linen paper. The only surviving account of that day is somewhat vague: dated years later, it’s from the diary of her close confidant and friend, Thomas McGraw. Wry and touching, most of his diaries are considered love letters to both his partners. He dedicated his entries equally to Miranda and James and, although we have no other accounts of Miranda, James McGraw is mentioned frequently in other accounts of the time: notably in the letters of Madi’s daughter Awa (who was named after her grandmother). From this evidence we have some picture of Madi’s later life, especially after the birth of her second child, but the historical record suffers somewhat from the fact that the majority of her closest friends were former slaves and as such were unlikely to have been literate. There are some notable exceptions of course: Eme Smith, who wrote frequently to Madi, and Julius Kwesi, who led the successful landing parties in both The Bahamas and Antigua. Some of Kwesi’s letters are in held in the permanent Madi Scott collection at The Gambia National Museum, which the second stop on my tour.

 

The collection itself is small, but beautifully presented. Both the collections in Henriette-Bathily Women's Museum in Dakar and the Maroons Museum in Kingston are bigger, but there is something about seeing Kwesi’s letters in person that makes this collection special. Kept under specially tinted glass, they are filled with accounts of battles and everyday details that would otherwise have been lost to history. Best of all, however are the caricatures drawn in the margins of the pages: here is Madi herself, in profile looking off the edge of the page; here is her husband, John Silver, standing tall on his famous peg leg. There are many more, but without names we are left with guesses as to who the frowning man and his tall companion may be, or even if they were anyone at all: merely characters from an active mind.

 

Last on my pilgrimage is the Gay Quarter, just south of Hope Street. Here there is no doubt that next week will be one of celebration: every window of every cafe and club is decorated with mayflowers (said to be blooming when the Declaration was written), and someone has spray painted those famous first lines onto the middle of the street: _firstly let it be known that all men and women are free…_ I talk to a local couple, who tell me that they don’t care if Madi was born in Banjul, or Accra or any other of the cities that claim her. To them, it was enough that she existed, that she was the first to put into words what most people have known all along: all are created equal.

 

We have come to take for granted the rights that most of us enjoy, rights that were in no way guaranteed 300 years ago. And, although written using terminology we would now shy away from, Madi Scott’s Declaration of Rights remains one of the most far-reaching statements of equality ever written: protection for people with physical disabilities; provisions made for those who we would now recognise as having invisible disabilities or mental health issues; recognition of gay/queer people; and, of course, equal rights regardless of race or religion.

 

So, whatever you do this Madi Scott Day, remember that we - all of us - owe her our freedom.

  
  
  


_Firstly let it be known that all men and women are free, and that that freedom is held in highest regard, without thought to religion, sex, colour of skin or the form that their love takes._

Declaration of Rights, Madi Scott

July 7th, 1718

**Author's Note:**

> There were countless real life rebel Queens - you can read about three of them [here](https://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/history/fates/the-three-rebel-queens/).


End file.
